In a late night session in Rome, the COP16 biodiversity talks – which resumed this week after failing to reach consensus last year – adopted a finance roadmap that will work towards a 2030 deadline, pushing back a final decision on how to channel scarce funding to help countries protect nature.
Under the roadmap, countries will assess whether to create a new, independent global biodiversity fund to replace the existing one sitting with the Global Environment Facility (GEF). This issue caused a major row at last year’s COP16 in Cali, Colombia – and is set to resurface in future discussions.
In an emotional final plenary in Rome in the early hours of Friday, COP16 president Susana Muhammad, who is Colombia’s outgoing environment minister, said: “I announce officially that we have given legs, arms and muscle to the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework”.
That framework, agreed in 2022 in Canada, is a global agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by protecting at least 30% of the planet’s land and seas by 2030 – but it remains unclear where the money will come from to pay for the efforts required.
“More than any other issue, the successful implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework will depend on whether the world meets its financing targets,” said Brian O’Donnell, director of advocacy group Campaign for Nature.
UK aid budget cuts threaten climate finance pledge to vulnerable nations, experts warn
Countries have agreed to mobilise $200 billion a year in finance for nature by 2030, including $30 billion from wealthy governments to poorer ones. The total for 2022 was around half that, official figures show.
Under the new finance roadmap agreed in Rome, by COP18 in 2028, countries committed to “identify and implement measures to enhance the global biodiversity finance to mobilize new and additional resources from all sources”.
A thorny issue on the horizon will be whether to expand the base of government contributors to include not only developed countries but also well-off emerging economies. That was also a major point of disagreement at last year’s COP29 climate summit in Baku.
At the COP16 talks in Rome, countries agreed to discuss the “opportunities for broadening the contributors base” by next year’s COP17.
“Quite simply, we have no chance of halting and reversing biodiversity loss without accelerating and exponentially increasing the delivery of finance to the areas most important for biodiversity,” said O’Donnell.
“This decision today lays out a roadmap. Now, it is up to leaders worldwide to prioritise urgent action for nature,” he added.
Funding gap
Finance has been one of the most contentious issues at the UN biodiversity negotiations. In Cali, countries failed to reach an agreement after clashing for two weeks over the issue. And funding was one of the key barriers holding back last decade’s Aichi targets to stop nature loss, which were largely unmet.
In this week’s three-day session in Rome, countries agreed to create two separate workstreams running until 2030: one focused on the “financial mechanism” to channel funds for biodiversity and another seeking to “improve the mobilization of finance from all sources”.
Experts estimate there is a $700-billion gap in funding for nature protection every year. To close this, countries agreed in 2022 to re-direct $500 billion now spent on subsidies that are harmful for nature, and to mobilise $200 billion from all available financial sources, including government budgets, the private sector, and multilateral development banks.
How COP16 2.0 can unlock business investment to properly fund nature
The new 2030 roadmap was criticised by some developing countries during the negotiations. “Biodiversity cannot wait for a bureaucratic process that lasts forever while the environmental crisis continues to get worse,” Bolivia’s delegate told a plenary on Wednesday.
Nonetheless the final finance agreement in Rome has broken a “longstanding policy deadlock”, said Jill Hepp, biodiversity funding lead at Conservation International. “Now that there is a path forward on how funding will flow, we all must take ambitious action to accomplish our collective goals,” she added in a statement.
New biodiversity fund?
Currently, international funds for nature protection flow through the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), administered by the GEF under an interim arrangement that ends in 2030. The main point of discussion at the resumed COP16 talks was what to do after that date.
The GBFF has struggled to attract funding, raising just $383 million in pledges from 12 developed countries so far. The most vulnerable nations also say the money isn’t reaching them and have criticised the GEF’s bureaucracy, leading a call to make the fund independent.
Under the Rome roadmap, countries agreed to have a permanent fund – but still need to work out whether it will stay at the GEF or whether to create an entirely new one. Governments are set to take this decision by 2028 and, if they opt for a new fund, they will discuss its operationalisation at COP19 in 2030.
Divisions over the new financial mechanism dominated discussions in Rome, while little time was spent on deciding how to increase cash flows. The BRICS group of emerging economies and African countries led the push for a new fund, while the European Union advocated for keeping it at the GEF.
“We will need to have more assurances when we embark on decisions on new financial mechanisms… that we won’t feel abandoned in the future,” said Brazilian negotiator Maria Angélica Ikeda.
Reacting to the outcome in Rome, the GEF’s CEO Carlos Manuel Rodríguez welcomed the decision and added that the GEF has gone through “a series of reforms” to better serve countries. “The GEF has been listening carefully to parties and is committed to continued improvements in order to respond to their expectations and capacities needs,” Rodríguez said in a statement.
Earlier in the week, the secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) launched the separate Cali Fund, which was agreed at last year’s talks in Colombia and is meant to receive voluntary contributions from companies that use genetic material from biodiversity. This is common in sectors like the pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetics industries.
The fund currently sits empty – but the UN said it is in conversations with potential donors, without revealing names due to commercial confidentiality. “The ball is now in the court of businesses around the world,” said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme.
Biodiversity plans lag behind
In Rome, countries also adopted a monitoring framework for the global biodiversity pact, which includes a set of indicators for countries to track progress on their national biodiversity strategies and action plans, known as NBSAPs.
The indicators – which include, for example, the number of species at risk of extinction or land use change in Indigenous territories – will help assess the effectiveness of country plans. Yet those plans remain few and far between.
Just 47 countries have submitted NBSAPs, according to the CBD’s tracker. Despite a formal deadline of last year’s COP16, only a handful of nations have presented new plans since, with Austria being the sole country to unveil its plan at this week’s resumed session in Rome. Key so-called “megadiverse” countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Brazil have yet to submit their NBSAPs.
Experts note that a lack of funding is a major obstacle for poorer countries in developing the plans, which require long consultation processes, in particular with Indigenous communities.
This is especially the case in Africa, where almost all countries have national biodiversity targets – a looser format that requires less spending – but not full NBSAPs.
With the finance decision now adopted in Rome, Hepp of Conservation International urged countries to focus on implementing their goals to safeguard nature and “urgently moving funds to protect lands and seas that sustain all of us”. “We must not take our eye off the ball,” she added.
The post UN biodiversity talks agree finance roadmap, pushing decision on a new fund to 2030 appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN biodiversity talks agree finance roadmap, pushing decision on a new fund to 2030
Climate Change
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Blazing heat hits Europe
FANNING THE FLAMES: Wildfires “fanned by a heatwave and strong winds” caused havoc across southern Europe, Reuters reported. It added: “Fire has affected nearly 440,000 hectares (1,700 square miles) in the eurozone so far in 2025, double the average for the same period of the year since 2006.” Extreme heat is “breaking temperature records across Europe”, the Guardian said, with several countries reporting readings of around 40C.
HUMAN TOLL: At least three people have died in the wildfires erupting across Spain, Turkey and Albania, France24 said, adding that the fires have “displaced thousands in Greece and Albania”. Le Monde reported that a child in Italy “died of heatstroke”, while thousands were evacuated from Spain and firefighters “battled three large wildfires” in Portugal.
UK WILDFIRE RISK: The UK saw temperatures as high as 33.4C this week as England “entered its fourth heatwave”, BBC News said. The high heat is causing “nationally significant” water shortfalls, it added, “hitting farms, damaging wildlife and increasing wildfires”. The Daily Mirror noted that these conditions “could last until mid-autumn”. Scientists warn the UK faces possible “firewaves” due to climate change, BBC News also reported.
Around the world
- GRID PRESSURES: Iraq suffered a “near nationwide blackout” as elevated power demand – due to extreme temperatures of around 50C – triggered a transmission line failure, Bloomberg reported.
- ‘DIRE’ DOWN UNDER: The Australian government is keeping a climate risk assessment that contains “dire” implications for the continent “under wraps”, the Australian Financial Review said.
- EXTREME RAINFALL: Mexico City is “seeing one of its heaviest rainy seasons in years”, the Washington Post said. Downpours in the Japanese island of Kyushu “caused flooding and mudslides”, according to Politico. In Kashmir, flash floods killed 56 and left “scores missing”, the Associated Press said.
- SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: China and Brazil agreed to “ensure the success” of COP30 in a recent phone call, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
- PLASTIC ‘DEADLOCK’: Talks on a plastic pollution treaty have failed again at a summit in Geneva, according to the Guardian, with countries “deadlocked” on whether it should include “curbs on production and toxic chemicals”.
15
The number of times by which the most ethnically-diverse areas in England are more likely to experience extreme heat than its “least diverse” areas, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- As many as 13 minerals critical for low-carbon energy may face shortages under 2C pathways | Nature Climate Change
- A “scoping review” examined the impact of climate change on poor sexual and reproductive health and rights in sub-Saharan Africa | PLOS One
- A UK university cut the carbon footprint of its weekly canteen menu by 31% “without students noticing” | Nature Food
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Factchecking Trump’s climate report
A report commissioned by the US government to justify rolling back climate regulations contains “at least 100 false or misleading statements”, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists. The report, compiled in two months by five hand-picked researchers, inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed” and misleadingly states that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”80
Spotlight
Does Xi Jinping care about climate change?
This week, Carbon Brief unpacks new research on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s policy priorities.
On this day in 2005, Xi Jinping, a local official in eastern China, made an unplanned speech when touring a small village – a rare occurrence in China’s highly-choreographed political culture.
In it, he observed that “lucid waters and lush mountains are mountains of silver and gold” – that is, the environment cannot be sacrificed for the sake of growth.
(The full text of the speech is not available, although Xi discussed the concept in a brief newspaper column – see below – a few days later.)
In a time where most government officials were laser-focused on delivering economic growth, this message was highly unusual.
Forward-thinking on environment
As a local official in the early 2000s, Xi endorsed the concept of “green GDP”, which integrates the value of natural resources and the environment into GDP calculations.
He also penned a regular newspaper column, 22 of which discussed environmental protection – although “climate change” was never mentioned.
This focus carried over to China’s national agenda when Xi became president.
New research from the Asia Society Policy Institute tracked policies in which Xi is reported by state media to have “personally” taken action.
It found that environmental protection is one of six topics in which he is often said to have directly steered policymaking.
Such policies include guidelines to build a “Beautiful China”, the creation of an environmental protection inspection team and the “three-north shelterbelt” afforestation programme.
“It’s important to know what Xi’s priorities are because the top leader wields outsized influence in the Chinese political system,” Neil Thomas, Asia Society Policy Institute fellow and report co-author, told Carbon Brief.
Local policymakers are “more likely” to invest resources in addressing policies they know have Xi’s attention, to increase their chances for promotion, he added.
What about climate and energy?
However, the research noted, climate and energy policies have not been publicised as bearing Xi’s personal touch.
“I think Xi prioritises environmental protection more than climate change because reducing pollution is an issue of social stability,” Thomas said, noting that “smoggy skies and polluted rivers” were more visible and more likely to trigger civil society pushback than gradual temperature increases.
The paper also said topics might not be linked to Xi personally when they are “too technical” or “politically sensitive”.
For example, Xi’s landmark decision for China to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 is widely reported as having only been made after climate modelling – facilitated by former climate envoy Xie Zhenhua – showed that this goal was achievable.
Prior to this, Xi had never spoken publicly about carbon neutrality.
Prof Alex Wang, a University of California, Los Angeles professor of law not involved in the research, noted that emphasising Xi’s personal attention may signal “top” political priorities, but not necessarily Xi’s “personal interests”.
By not emphasising climate, he said, Xi may be trying to avoid “pushing the system to overprioritise climate to the exclusion of the other priorities”.
There are other ways to know where climate ranks on the policy agenda, Thomas noted:
“Climate watchers should look at what Xi says, what Xi does and what policies Xi authorises in the name of the ‘central committee’. Is Xi talking more about climate? Is Xi establishing institutions and convening meetings that focus on climate? Is climate becoming a more prominent theme in top-level documents?”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP EFFECT: The Columbia Energy Exchange podcast examined how pressure from US tariffs could affect India’s clean energy transition.
NAMIBIAN ‘DESTRUCTION’: The National Observer investigated the failure to address “human rights abuses and environmental destruction” claims against a Canadian oil company in Namibia.
‘RED AI’: The Network for the Digital Economy and the Environment studied the state of current research on “Red AI”, or the “negative environmental implications of AI”.
Coming up
- 17 August: Bolivian general elections
- 18-29 August: Preparatory talks on the entry into force of the “High Seas Treaty”, New York
- 18-22 August: Y20 Summit, Johannesburg
- 21 August: Advancing the “Africa clean air programme” through Africa-Asia collaboration, Yokohama
Pick of the jobs
- Lancaster Environment Centre, senior research associate: JUST Centre | Salary: £39,355-£45,413. Location: Lancaster, UK
- Environmental Justice Foundation, communications and media officer, Francophone Africa | Salary: XOF600,000-XOF800,000. Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Politico, energy & climate editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brussels, Belgium
- EnviroCatalysts, meteorologist | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi, India
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Climate Change
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
The specter of a “gas-for-wind” compromise between the governor and the White House is drawing the ire of residents as a deadline looms.
Hundreds of New Yorkers rallied against new natural gas pipelines in their state as a deadline loomed for the public to comment on a revived proposal to expand the gas pipeline that supplies downstate New York.
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
A “critical assessment” report commissioned by the Trump administration to justify a rollback of US climate regulations contains at least 100 false or misleading statements, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists.
The report – “A critical review of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the US climate” – was published by the US Department of Energy (DoE) on 23 July, just days before the government laid out plans to revoke a scientific finding used as the legal basis for emissions regulation.
The executive summary of the controversial report inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed”.
It also states misleadingly that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”.
Compiled in just two months by five “independent” researchers hand-selected by the climate-sceptic US secretary of energy Chris Wright, the document has sparked fierce criticism from climate scientists, who have pointed to factual errors, misrepresentation of research, messy citations and the cherry-picking of data.
Experts have also noted the authors’ track record of promoting views at odds with the mainstream understanding of climate science.
Wright’s department claims the report – which is currently open to public comment as part of a 30-day review – underwent an “internal peer-review period amongst [the] DoE’s scientific research community”.
The report is designed to provide a scientific underpinning to one flank of the Trump administration’s plans to rescind a finding that serves as the legal prerequisite for federal emissions regulation. (The second flank is about legal authority to regulate emissions.)
The “endangerment finding” – enacted by the Obama administration in 2009 – states that six greenhouse gases are contributing to the net-negative impacts of climate change and, thus, put the public in danger.
In a press release on 29 July, the US Environmental Protection Agency said “updated studies and information” set out in the new report would “challenge the assumptions” of the 2009 finding.
Carbon Brief asked a wide range of climate scientists, including those cited in the “critical review” itself, to factcheck the report’s various claims and statements.
The post Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-trumps-climate-report-includes-more-than-100-false-or-misleading-claims/
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